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Thursday, January 31, 2013

is to tell
everyone what the next theme is.Hmm…Let
me see. I'd just finished my dinner and
desert. I couldn’t eat it all so this is
what was left.

While
thinking about our next theme I turned on the TV and started "channel surfing" There were programs about
ancient civilizations;

about the results of war;

about renovating and remodelling;

and a
documentary about forest fires.

I was
starting to see a theme.Have you
guessed it yet? If I add
one or two more pictures like this?

Does that
help?No….Okay I’ll give you the
answer.The theme this time around is
REMNANTS.

Just think,
there are remnants of the past, remnants of time, not to
mention the remnants pictured above.So
there you have it; our theme for this next round is REMNANTS.I think because February is such a short
month, let’s make our reveal date April 30th. I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone interprets this theme. Remember...take pictures of your process to share. And if you run into a road block come back here to share

Monday, January 28, 2013

This challenge was one of the most challenging so far for me. I went through lots and lots of ideas, but I couldn't decide on one. Then I did a couple of craftsy courses with Carol Ann Waugh (Stitch and Slash and Stupendous stitching) and this piece came from those classes. I was very unhappy with it at one stage and remembered that Carol said "More is more" so I just kept embellishing until I liked it. Hope you do!

And here are a few close ups

As you can see I did a lot of couching and beading. I hope the fabric keeps fraying as time goes on, because I like the little frayed edges.
Enjoy

Like so many of the others I had a hard time deciding which direction I should take for this theme. There were so many options some of which I had listed on a previous post. After several searches on Google and some more brainstorming, I finally decided. This little picture helped with the decision.

During my searching I remember coming across a band called Blue Delft. However there is also Delft pottery. The blue images adorned tiles as well as various pottery shapes. All I had to do was select a shape then go to work. Somehow the "blue" theme also reminded me of the sad faced masks from tragedies. So I traced one and then enlarged it.

I found this fabric and thought it was perfect. I could fussy cut it and applique it to the mask shape.

I had to figure out how to get the shadow on the mask and at the same time have the blue flowers on the mask show up. Well first things first....trace the shadow onto separate sheets of paper to create some templates.

﻿

Then there were templates for the other features. I tried several different fabrics but thought I would be able to get the best result by using organza for the shadow. But how do you cut up the organza so that it doesn't fray....

with a wood burning tool. It works beautifully. So now I had all the pieces for the mask, but what about the background. A grid for a sense of tiles for the background would be good. The grid was created with blue satin ribbon, and some added little details.

After a few additional experiments and some free motion quilting I finally had my piece and....

TA DA!!! A Blue Delft Tragedy! I learned some valuable lessons with this one. You can see those on my blog.

Like some of the rest of you, I had a heck of a time settling on a single idea to turn into my theme piece. Blue has so many wonderful ways it could be taken - everything from the bluebird of happiness, once in a blue moon, talking a blue stream, blue jeans, blue eyes, the wild blue yonder to blues music and even feeling blue, to name just a few. I think that last one settled in on me - the January Blues hit and I just could not get motivated. I pulled some fabric a while back and you saw this:

That wasn't working for me, but then I pulled out some of my indigo pieces from last summer and thought that would be the trick. I started working away on this one:

But I bit off far too much - deciding to do it all by hand, and while I like it and think it will get finished, it will be a slow hand working project, with no deadlines.

That left me at Friday night with nothing to show. Back to my blue stash. So far, I'd been looking at more true blue types of colours.

I needed to charge things up a bit, so I started pulling my brighter blues - the turquoises. They brighten my spirits. Add some white, and I'm happy! Some simple piecing with the thought that I would add some fun and funky embellishments.

Then disaster. see my blog for the details, but lets just say I'm without a machine capable of doing freemotion at this point in time. :(

Another change of plans ensued, but finally, I got it done! Luckily, the walking foot worked, and I got to play with that - I've not used a walking foot on a project before to do the quilting.

Banish the Blues

add some self covered buttons with a bit of glitz

mix up the quilting

a self piped binding to finish it off

Nice and bright, and hopefully, those January Blues will be gone for good!

I toyed with the idea of using denim at one
point, briefly abandoned it and then when I saw Nicolett's
post about boro, I was really
intrigued by this method of recycling garments.

After
further contemplation I decided to use denim which brought to mind a picnic
quilt I had made for my daughter's family years ago. At my artist husband's insistence, we have
been saving worn blue jeans for years, so having enough denim in my stash was no
problem. Over the years I have made
handbags and tote bags from denim and my daughter even made a jacket from the
leftovers. So using denim was
decided.

Now for the design. I started with a photo of the picnic
quilt and began manipulating
it with Photoshop.

Picnic quilt

Manipulated design

Most of the ensuing designs would have been very labor intensive but I finally created a design which seemed achievable. The picnic quilt was huge in comparison to our 16" x 16" format, so I cropped a section of the design and used it as a point of departure.

When I realized that even the pared down design would require
piecing very small bits of fabric, it seemed that if I was to finish on time, I
could not meticulously follow the colors and patterns in the cropped design.

So the finished quilt is randomly pieced 2 ½" squares
set together in a mostly random pattern.

I ended up taking the literal approach to 'blue' and dug out all the blue fabrics I could find, sorted them into various piles.....

I chose a few that I liked together and added a couple of accents pieces.

I decided I wanted to so some fabric weaving so played with my tablet sketchbook feature doing various 'cuts' and finally cut a simple pattern from paper and cut my pieces for weaving....

Pieces woven together....

I liked that they created pot-like images but they also created fish-like images ..... hmm, which way to go?

Final direction could come later, for now on with the quilting. I used machine patterns for the edge stitching along the 'seams' and then free motion quilting for the squares. I'm enjoying the much needed practice I get with these challenges!

Now for the embellishments.... so many decisions, but I decided that I would add some clay pieces ... but which ones and where?

A fish? At the bottom or the top?

Pots with embellishments?

The pot direction won and I decided to put the buttons in the lower area where I felt the center of interest was. After sewing them in place I'm not sure I made the right decision. Perhaps I should leave it without embellishment....